Izabella Colon – Dental Hygiene Internship

Garden Spot Dental is a great opportunity for young students to experience the responsibilities that come with being in the dental field. The interns are typically trained on how to properly sterilize equipment and rooms, and then how to set them up for procedures. The staff is extremely kind and hardworking and willing to help! There is so much to learn and memorize when it comes to dental, but they have neat tips and tricks to help!

In one image, you will see me wrapping cassettes after they come out of the first stage of sterilization where they are pressure-washed with cleaning chemicals and then blasted with water to dry them. Next would be putting them through a machine that uses steam to sterilize the packaged cassettes and pouches. They then get dried again and put back out to use. Then the process gets repeated!

In another photo, you will see me tearing down a room and sterilizing it so I can then set it up for another procedure, as seen in image three. After taking away all the important pieces in a dirty room, they then go to sterile. We then take all the garbage and contaminated objects and throw them away. After that, we wipe down any remaining contaminated objects so the room is clean for the next setup.

Overall, I believe that this was a helpful experience, as it has made me realize I would like to commit to the dental field. Now that I have this internship under my belt and I have been trained in all that an intern can, I have the dental experience to put on my resume. Not only do I have career experience, but I’ve also made great memories with the staff as they’ve helped me learn and grow!